I can't help but feel relieved when I step outside of the gymnasium, the academy grounds still cloaked in darkness. I look up at the sky and watch as a cloud of my breath drift upwards toward the satellites that are flickering high above like strobing stars. Relief courses through me, the tension leaving my shoulders as I take a measured, even breath.

In, out.

I am powerful, I am not weak, I remind myself, even though I've let Bastet dissipate I still feel her power. I am a protector of witches.

The realizations bring me a rush of happiness as I close my eyes and tilt my head up, letting the stress and fear drift away, like dead leaves buoyed on a river as they're carried away, one by one. I've found a purpose, something I can pour myself into. I know then that my parents fear for me.

But perhaps things can be different.

It's been many years since my great great grandmother's murder, maybe things have changed.

Witches can have the chance to all live in harmony, as equals. Maybe all everyone needs is to know that we exist in the first place, that we could be just another face in the crowd.

A scream abruptly splits the air, cleaving the silence open and replacing it with ice that shoots up my spine and makes the hairs on my arms and neck stand up. Horror crawls, fresh and writhing under my skin.

I've yet to hear someone scream in such a way in my life as my eyes snap open and look around.

I can't see where it came from, but it repeats, a horrific, choked peal of a screech. I run, my feet launching me forward on the concrete sidewalk. I sprint in the general direction of the scream and navigate the best that I can in the dark, a shadow casting on the sidewalk from the moon above me.

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I round the bend of the gymnasium, only to come to a skittering stop.

A dark, human-shaped lump is lying in the middle of the sidewalk, its form illuminated by the silver moonlight. The limbs are sprawled around it in a way that is unnatural and I see the wrongness in it immediately.

I hurry to their side, my heart in my throat as I drop to my knees beside the motionless form. My knees crack painfully against the cold concrete as I roll the form onto their back.

Dark brown eyes stare skywards, unseeing and blank. I notice the light blonde eyebrows sit perched above them, their expression slack.

I recognize the person, but I don't initially know where from as I can only stare at the wet patch on their chest.

I don't process it as blood at first.

I don't process much at all at first.

What...what happened to them?

I shake them gently, expecting for a moment for their eyes to meet mine but they don't. Their body is heavy, far heavier than normal as their head listlessly lolls against the concrete. The fabric of their shirt is torn away to reveal a gaping wound that is weeping blood as my limbs go cold.

I press a finger against their neck to check for a pulse, hoping against all else that I will feel the steady thrum of blood pumping through their veins.

I feel nothing.

I sit back on my heels as nausea makes my throat tighten, threatening to drag me under as blackness begins to creep into the corners of my vision. My breath is coming out in gasps as I can only stare.

I know him.

My stomach heaves and I scramble to my feet and take a few steps back, my hands shaking violently when I realize that there's blood on them from rolling him over. I turn and vomit on the grass lining the sidewalk, my throat stinging from the stomach acid that makes it burn. Tears run down my face as I empty my stomach until I'm left dry-heaving and weak.

I scrub the tears away when I'm done and wipe my mouth with my sleeve before I dare to approach the body once more, my stomach churning as I look down at it in shock.

Lying dead at my feet is Finn Delacroix.